A patient undergoing a surgical procedure is generally at least partially covered by a surgical drape. The surgical procedure is often performed through a fenestration (which can be a window, slit, or other opening) in the drape. The importance of surgical draping in providing an aseptic field about the central operative area is well known. It is common practice for many types of surgery to cover the patient and operating table with a sterile drape in such a way that only the portion of the body upon which surgery is to be performed is presented to the surgeon. The drape must conform rather closely to the contour of the operative area to insure that a sterile surgical field is maintained until the procedure is completed. One of the objectives of some surgical drapes is to disperse fluid runoff from the surgical site so that it does not obstruct the working of the surgeon and so that it does not soil the patient. It is presently common practice to furnish or employ various types of drape constructions and draping procedures for different types of surgical procedures.
Certain types of surgeries result in only a small amount of fluid runoff from the surgical site. In these cases, the fluid may be simply dispersed across the surface of the drape; some drapes are produced with an absorbent exterior surface in order to absorb such fluid runoff. In contrast to those types of surgeries, cranial surgeries often result in a substantial amount of fluid runoff from the surgical site. In cranial surgical cases, the surgical drape is used to channel these fluids into a receptacle. One such receptacle is a pouch attached to the exterior of the surgical drape. Drapes with such receptacles are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,890,628, 4,598,458, 4,559,937, 4,323,062, 4,169,472, 3,955,569, 3,952,738, 3,911,912, and 3,791,382. However, due to the single drainage avenue for fluid collection, the surgeon is often forced to re-adjust the drape or channeling means such that the fluids drain into the receptacle.
Certain cranial surgeries require the surgeon to remove a portion of the skull. This extracted cranial bone may be re-implanted in the patient's skull at a later date. Current procedures include removing the cranial bone in a sterile fashion and freezing it in a deep-freezer for re-implantation at a later date. This practice presents various risks when a specimen is removed from the patient; handled and wrapped for future sterile, aseptic re-introduction; and then re-introduced to a sterile field some time after harvesting. The technical requirements for monitoring and preserving the cranial bone ex-vivo are demanding due to risks of contamination and specimen deterioration. One current technique to avoid monitoring and preserving ex-vivo samples is to implant the cranial bone into the patient's own abdomen directly after extraction. This implantation allows for the cranial bone to remain in a sterile environment and with the patient until re-implantation is warranted.